News Broadcasting
ESS’ deal with the Asian Football Confederation
MUMBAI: Sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has reached a multi-year agreement with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
Asian football fans can tune in to ESS over the next three years for coverage of some of the world’s and the region’s biggest football tournaments. The AFC package includes the rights for the 2004 Asian Olympic Qualifiers and the Asian World Cup Qualifies (for the 2006 World Cup) as well as the Asian Cup 2004, the biennial Tiger Cup (2004 and 2006) and the biennial Asian Youth Under-20 Championships (2004 and 2006). The package also includes the Asian football weekly magazine show Football Asia . This wil air from April to March 2006.
In all, ESS will air 170 hours of live Asian football action on Star Sports (48-hour delayed basis in China for the World Cup and Olympic Qualifiers and Asian Cup matches). This will reach over 57 million households across Asia claims the broadcaster.
ESS’ senior VP programming & Event Management Group Manu Sawhney was quoted in a company release saying, “We already know how strong the appetite for football is in Asia. More and more, Asian football and Asian football players are coming into their own. This became evident after the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea and seems set to continue.
“Our goal through this calendar of Asian football programming is intended to fan the flames of passion through providing Asian fans with an avenue to see their national team compete at the highest standards in their quest to claim a berth on the world’s football stage. This series of Asian football tournaments will no doubt be a good barometer of the continually changing balance of power in Asian football.”
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
